Love Poem Without a Drop of Hyperbole in It

I love you like ladybugs love windowsills, love youlike sperm whales love squid. There’s no depthI wouldn’t follow you through. I love you likethe pawns in chess love aristocratic horses.I’ll throw myself in front of a bishop or a queenfor you. Even a sentient castle. My love is crazylike that. I like that sweet little hothouse mouthyou have. I like to kiss you with tongue, with gusto,with socks still on. I love you like a vulture lovesthe careless deer at the roadside. I want to getall up in you. I love you like Isis loved Osiris,but her devotion came up a few inches short.I’d train my breath and learn to read sonar untilI retrieved every lost blood vessel of you. I swearthis love is ungodly, not an ounce of suffering in it.Like salmon and its upstream itch, I’ll dodge grizzliesfor you. Like hawks and skyscraper rooftops,I’ll keep coming back. Maddened. A little hopeless.Embarrassingly in love. And that’s why I’m onthe couch kissing pictures on my phone instead ofcalling you in from the kitchen where you areundoubtedly making dinner too spicy, but whenyou hold the spoon to my lips and ask if it’s readyI’ll say it is, always, but never, there is never enough.

Traci Brimhall is the author of, most recently, the poetry collection "Saudade." She is an assistant professor of creative writing at Kansas State University.

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